Glam-enchantress - Down The Rabbit Hole

YA SFF Books by Black Authors 

A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow: About the strength of black sisterhood set in Portland, OR, best friends Tavi and Effie discover their true supernatural identity when Effie starts being haunted by demons from her past, and Tavia accidentally lets out her magical siren voice during a police stop.

A Chorus Rises (A Song Below Water #2) by Bethany C. Morrow: Teen influencer Naema Bradshaw is an Eloko, a person who’s gifted with a song that woos anyone who hears it. Everyone loves her — well, until she’s cast as the awful person who exposed Tavia’s secret siren powers. When a new, flourishing segment of Naema’s online supporters start targeting black girls, however, Naema must discover the true purpose of her magical voice.

A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A. Brown: Inspired by West African folklore in which a grieving crown princess, Karina, and a desperate refugee, Malik, find themselves on a collision course to murder each other, despite their growing attraction.

Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor: Sunny Nwazue, an American-born albino child of Nigerian parents, moves with her family back to Nigeria, where she learns that she has latent magical powers which she and three similarly gifted friends use to catch a serial killer.

Akata Warrior (Akata Witch #2) by Nnedi Okorafor: Now stronger, feistier, and a bit older, Sunny Nwazue, along with her friends from the the Leopard Society, travel through worlds, both visible and invisible, to the mysterious town of Osisi, where they fight in a climactic battle to save humanity.

Bad Witch Burning by Jessica Lewis: For fans of Us and The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina comes a witchy story full of black girl magic as one girl’s dark ability to summon the dead offers her a chance at a new life, while revealing to her an even darker future.

Beasts Made of Night by Tochi Onyebuchi: After he eats the sin of a royal, Taj, a talented aki, or sin-eater who consumes the guilt of others whose transgressions are exorcised from them by powerful but corrupt Mages, is drawn into a plot to destroy the city, and he must fight to save the princess he loves and his own life.

Beasts of Prey by Ayana Gray: Two Black teenagers, talented Beastkeeper Koffi and warrior-in-training Ekon, must trek into a magical jungle to take down an ancient creature menacing the city of Lkossa, before they become the hunted.

The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton: In the opulent world of Orléans, where Beauty is a commodity only a few control, Belle Camellia Beauregard will learn the dark secrets behind her powers, and rise up to change the world. 

A Blade So Black by L.L. McKinney: A whimsical and butt-kicking Alice in Wonderland retelling featuring a black teen heroine who battles Nightmares in the dark and terrifying dream realm known as Wonderland. 

Bleeding Violet by Dia Reeves: 16-year-old Hanna reunites with her estranged mother in an East Texas town that is haunted with doors to dimensions of the dead and protected by demon hunters called Mortmaine.

Blood Like Magic by Liselle Sambury: Set in near-future Toronto in which, after failing to come into her powers, 16-year-old Black witch Voya Thomas must choose between losing her family’s magic forever or murdering her first love.

The Bones of Ruin by Sarah Raughley: Set in Victorian England, African tightrope walker Iris cannot die; but soon gets drafted in the fight-to-the-death tournament of freaks where she learns the terrible truth of who and what she really is.

The Cost of Knowing by Brittney Morris: A gripping, evocative novel about Black teen Alex Rufus, who has the power to see into the future, and whose life turns upside down when he foresees his younger brother’s imminent death.

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi: 17-year-old Zélie and companions journey to a mythic island seeking a chance to bring back magic to the land of Orïsha, in a fantasy world infused with the textures of West Africa.

Children of Virtue and Vengeance (Legacy of Orïsha #2) by Tomi Adeyemi: After battling the impossible, Zélie and Amari have finally succeeded in bringing magic back to the land of Orïsha. But with civil war looming on the horizon, Zélie finds herself at a breaking point: she must discover a way to bring the kingdom together or watch as Orïsha tears itself apart.

Cinderella Is Dead by Kalynn Bayron: 16-year-old Sophia would much rather marry Erin, her childhood best friend, than parade in front of suitors. At the ball, Sophia flees, hiding in Cinderella’s mausoleum. There, she meets Constance, the last known descendant of Cinderella and her step sisters. Together they vow to bring down the king once and for all.

The Cost of Knowing by Brittney Morris: A gripping, evocative novel about Black teen Alex Rufus, who has the power to see into the future, and whose life turns upside down when he foresees his younger brother’s imminent death.

Crown of Thunder (Beasts Made of Night #2) by Tochi Onyebuchi: Taj has escaped Kos, but Queen Karima will go to any means necessary–including using the most deadly magic–to track him down. 

A Crown So Cursed (Nightmare Verse #3) by L.L. McKinney: Alice is ready to jump into battle when she learns that someone is building an army of Nightmares to attack the mortal world, before she learns of a personal connection to Wonderland.

Daughters of Jubilation by Kara Lee Corthron: In Jim Crow South, black teen Evalene Deschamps finds her place among a family of women gifted with magical abilities, known as jubilation - a gift passed down from generations of black women since the time of slavery.

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland: The Civil War is over, but mostly because the dead rose at Gettysburg—and then started rising everywhere else. Fighting the undead is a breeze for Jane McKenne, an Attendant, trained in both weaponry and etiquette to protect the well-to-do. But the fight for freedom? That’s a different story.

Keep reading

So Many Beginnings: A Little Women Remix (2021)

Four young Black sisters come of age during the American Civil War in So Many Beginnings, a warm and powerful YA remix of the classic novel Little Women, by national bestselling author Bethany C. Morrow.

North Carolina, 1863. As the American Civil War rages on, the Freedmen’s Colony of Roanoke Island is blossoming, a haven for the recently emancipated. Black people have begun building a community of their own, a refuge from the shadow of the “old life.” It is where the March family has finally been able to safely put down roots with four young daughters:

Meg, a teacher who longs to find love and start a family of her own.

Jo, a writer whose words are too powerful to be contained.

Beth, a talented seamstress searching for a higher purpose.

Amy, a dancer eager to explore life outside her family’s home.

As the four March sisters come into their own as independent young women, they will face first love, health struggles, heartbreak, and new horizons. But they will face it all together.

by Bethany C. Morrow  (Author)

Get it now here

Bethany C. Morrow is a recovering expat recently returning from six years in Montreal, Quebec, to live and write in north country, New York.

A California native, Bethany graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a BA in Sociology. Following undergrad, she studied Clinical Psychological Research at the University of Wales, Bangor, in Great Britain before returning to North America to focus on her literary work.

She is the author of the adult novel Mem (Unnamed Press) and the editor of the young adult anthology Take the Mic (Arthur A. Levine Books). A Song Below Water is her debut standalone young adult novel.

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just a reminder for all of you wonderful writers out there:

the gifts of beauty and song

ok so i think maleficent did a great job of giving us a different kind of sleeping beauty story but here’s another one

what if the three faeries were the dark ones

what if maleficent had been the good faerie all along

fae are all about illusion, about misdirection, about doing one thing and being another. it makes sense that the adorable and seemingly kind faeries would be the bad ones, and the one shrouded and darkness and cruelty would be the one trying to do some good.

“you will be gifted with beauty” says flora, but what is beautiful to the fae is often horrific to everyone else. beauty to the fae is coldness, darkness, it’s emotionless and ruthless and power. it has almost nothing to do with a pretty face.

“you will be gifted with song,” says fauna, but that means voice, pretty words, and oh, who doesn’t know what tangled webs the fae weave with their words, the traps they leave, the same way they’re doing it right now

then maleficent arrives - and she’s too late. the young princess has already been cursed. she’ll grow now not into a young woman, but a young fae. a mercurial being, not someone fit to lead the land of men. so she does what she must. maleficent is a good faerie, she can’t kill directly, so instead she curses the no-longer-human child, gives her a curse of death that will be complete when she pricks her finger on the needle of a spinning wheel. it’s indirect, but it’s the only way she knows to save this kingdom. then she leaves.

but the faeries will not be defeated so easily. so merryweather casts her own spell, alters maleficent’s just enough – she will fall into a deep sleep, one that can be broken by the most powerful magic this world knows: true love’s kiss.

the faeries aren’t worried. true love is an easy enough spell, they only need a suitable, malleable prince to cast it on when the time comes. foolish mortal have been falling in love with beautiful fae since the dawn of time, and this will be no different.

the king announces all the spinning wheels are to either be burned or locked up in a secret room in the palace, and that the faeries will raise aurora in the woods, far away from spinning wheels and evil faeries.

this all works out even better than they could have hoped for. they get to raise aurora on their own, get to teach her the subtle arts of manipulation and misdirection out from under the eyes of the king and queen. aurora grows older, and more beautiful, more dangerous. the fae will have one of their own on the thrown of the mortal realm, will have a fae queen because aurora is more faerie than human now.

aurora isn’t a faerie though. not completely: she’s human enough to lie, to cheat, and steal – to throw off the shackles that hold back the rest of the fae and use her position as queen to tear down the world.

maleficent likes these humans, it’s why she spends so much time in their realm. they’re fun playthings. if the fae succeed at putting one of their own on the thrown, then the mortal realm will turn into something as twisted and cruel as the fae court. that’s not what maleficent wants – humans are twisted and broken, but in the same ways. she likes them how they are, and she wants them to stay that way.

so she steals away the young prince philip in the middle of the night, weaving a spell of sleep on him, and she goes to the forests, deep into them, slipping into the darkest shadows of the oldest trees. she goes to the elves, because they are one of few races who can’t be tricked by their magic, who know the sharp cleverness of their tongue, who know the worst and best of what faeries can be. she goes to the elf king and queen and offers them philip in exchange for an elven prince, one she can place back on the throne in the mortal realm.

“one mortal prince is not worth an elf prince,” says the king, “for the child, you may have a servant child.”

an elf child is pushed forward, and to an untrained eye he looks like all the others, but hers is not an untrained eye. he’s smaller than he should be, his clothes don’t sit as perfectly straight as the others do. but he has kind eyes, and that’s truly what she needs, more than royal blood. besides, she has nothing left to bargain with.

“very well,” she says, and hands the boy to the queen, who quirks an eyebrow but takes the boy agreeably enough. maleficent doesn’t know what they plan to do with the boy. she does not care – they won’t hurt him, but that’s as far as her knowledge extends. the elf child moves to her side, and she bows low before holding out her hand. the elf boy takes it, and they travel back to the mortal realm.

“your name is philip now,” she tells him, “you are a prince here.”

“yes ma’am,” he says, used to taking orders, and not used to being a prince. “what would you like me to do?”

she looks down at him, and he’s staring at her, patient and with those same soft eyes, and she says, “grow up. don’t be afraid. this is your realm now, and these are your people. do you understand?”

his eyebrows dip together, so she knows he doesn’t, but he says, “yes, ma’am.” that’s okay. he’s her only hope to save aurora, to save the world. he doesn’t need to know that.

so philip grows. he has a doting father and is trained to be a little prince, and that’s what he becomes. he grows up honest, and kind, and humble. he becomes a prince that no other elf could be, only someone who’s seen the crueler and harder side of life would know how important it is to strive to make the world just a little softer.

aurora is a young woman now. ethereally beautiful, manipulative and thoughtlessly cruel, just like her faerie guardians raised her to be. except she’s not all fae. she’s a human too, a young mortal girl that loves beautiful things and the warm rays of sunlight on her skin and the soft weight of a fox napping on her lap. one day she’s in the woods, trying to encourage an apple tree to grow. philip is there, having gotten separated from his hunting party and hopelessly lost, and he’s just thankful there are no other elves around to laugh at him. an elf! lost! in the woods!

except instead he bumps into aurora, and he can see under glamour effortlessly, isn’t even sure why she has one when she’s so beautiful underneath. “hello,” he says politely, because the elves considered faeries to be beneath them but his father raised him with manners. besides, she doesn’t feel quite like a fae.

and aurora looks at this handsome young man, not the first she’s seen, but the first she’s seen whom she likes, even if she can’t know why. he feels different, his presence in the air isn’t like the other mortal men she’s encountered. instead, he – he almost – he almost feels like her. like something that doesn’t belong, like something not quite normal and not quiet other, like they’re the answers to something but everyone forgot to tell them the question.

so they’re circling each other, intrigued by each other, and philip and aurora end up spending the day talking and playing and laughing and coaxing trees into growing and enticing woodland creatures to say hello and getting fish to bring them shiny rocks from the stream. all the things normal elvish and fae children get to do, but they never got a chance to because philip was a servant and aurora is a plaything for dark faeries who want her to become something twisted just like them.

and they meet, in secret, again and again. and philip peels away the layers of aurora’s cruelty and hardness, untangles all the bits of her that the faeries had tried so hard to twist together. aurora is still smart and manipulative and powerful – but the scales have tipped just enough, being with philip has healed her just enough so that she’s more human than fae.

philip and aurora fall in love, because of course they do, they’re two of a kind, different sides of the same coin, they don’t believe in destiny but they believe in each other.

philip tells his father he’s found the woman he wants to mary. aurora is whisked back to the castle, and her guardians tell her of their plan: aurora will return to her parents, and she will be named the heir, the crown princess. then the faeries will kill them, and aurora will become queen.

aurora doesn’t care about her parents. the person she was before meeting philip would have been all for this plan, or at least wouldn’t have minded. but now – she knows morality, she knows little girls shouldn’t go around killing the people that bore them. so she hatches a plan instead.

she pretends to go along with it, of course, pretends to be just as agreeable and despicable as always. the faeries are banking the success of their plan on aurora’s ability to lie. they forget that she can lie to them too.

iron can be used against fae, so she goes searching the castle for something she can take and use. she finds a locked room, and when she gets inside it’s filled with broken spinning wheels. she can’t begin to imagine why this room exists, but it doesn’t matter. she carefully goes through, gathering the needles from each wheel. she’ll only have one chance to do this. she has to get it right.

meanwhile, philip can’t find aurora. she’s not in the woods or the cottage, and he’s desperate. he begs the wind for help, knows that he’s not the sort of elf that the wind cares to listen to, but this is important, it’s a matter of love. and the wind helps him, guides him to the castle. it’s the day of aurora’s coronation as crown princess.

she’s prepared, she was up all night carefully weaving magic into the needles, the ones that she’s tucked into the sleeves of her dress. little girls probably shouldn’t be going around killing the beings that raised them either, but thanks to philip she knows the faeries that raised her are not good, that the things they made her do were not good, and she wishes she could feel bad about what she’s going to do, but she doesn’t.

she’s about to be coronated, the faeries by her side, when she spins, knocking the crown from her mother’s hands and onto the floor. she reaches inside and flings the needles with inhuman force. they embed themselves into the faeries, and aurora flings herself between the faeries and her parents, refusing to let harm come to them, because she doesn’t care but she knows she should, because she thinks that if philip was here he would want her to care.

and it’s a vicious fight, of magic and strength, but aurora is just as the faeries made her – powerful and beautiful and strong, and she wins.

the faeries lay dead and aurora turns to her people, the ones staring at her in fear, and she drops her glamour, reveals her blond hair and pink lips, and she almost looks the same, before she looked like something out of a nightmare, and now she looks like what she is – a princess, pretty and hard and broken but in love and with a heart that can learn to love even more than a lost prince with kind eyes. “they were dark faeries. i know it’s hard to tell the difference, but it’s true. they would have destroyed you,” she tells them, and her voice breaks, “just like they tried to destroy me. you are my people. i will protect you.”

and it’s been a long time since this realm has had a warrior princess, a warrior queen, but after a long moment of stunned silence they start cheering, and pressing forward, and aurora is smiling. her parents come forward, wanting to make sure she’s okay, wanting to make sure they’re foolish decision to entrust her to faeries hasn’t broken their only daughter.

aurora reaches out a hand. a single spindle needle falls from her sleeve. she reaches out to grab it and –

– it pricks her finger. she collapses instantly. everyone’s crowding around her, her parents are weeping, because she’s in a death-like sleep, because they were so close to having her back and they’ve lost her.

philip bursts through the doors, “aurora!”

he pushes to the front of the room, hands reaching for her. “philip?” the king asks, staring at the son of one of his best friends, at the boy who they’d arranged to marry his daughter.

“what happened to her?” he asks, hands hovering over her, but not wanting to touch and somehow make it worse. he glances at the dead faeries, “was it them? i knew they were hurting her, i knew it–”

“you know her?” the queen asks.

philip looks between them, and gathers his courage and admits, “i love her.”

the king and queen look at each other, then at him. “true love’s kiss will break the spell,” she says urgently, “please, you must try.”

philip stares, because true love’s kiss is a faeries spell, or a mortal miracle, but it has nothing to do with elvish servants and almost-fae princesses. but he loves her. so he must try.

he bends over, oh so carefully, and they’ve never kissed before, so he closes his eyes, and presses his lips to hers, soft and careful, just enough pressure to make sure it counts and not a bit more. he leans back, and they all wait.

aurora opens her eyes. “philip!” she cries, then: “you kissed me!”

“yes,” he says, even as her parents pull her up and hug her tight. “will you marry me?”

her parents let go and she flings herself into his arms, “yes!”

and the very confused audience for this coronation / murder / engagement starts clapping, because a royal wedding is something to be celebrated, and as confusing as the past couple hours have been, they’re at least clear on that.

aurora and philip stay in love and get married, officially uniting their two kingdoms. they’re are scarily well matched couple, and just and powerful and merciful rulers.

the day of their coronation as king and queen of their newly united land, maleficent stands at the back of the crowd and smiles.

read more of my retold fairytales here

I can sense vibrations. Even the tiniest movement. Including your voices when you speak.